July 13, 2008

The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama's right-wing critics have tried to create. But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive.

And we agree.

The artist is Barry Blitt, and I have to say that I think the cover is a hilarious spoof of the fears and lies about Obama. Michelle and Barack are in the Oval Office, doing a celebratory fist bump. There's an Osama Bin Laden portrait on the wall and a burning flag in the fireplace. He's a Muslim and she's a revolutionary. Of course, Obama has to push it aside and can scarcely laugh about it.

Or, maybe, I don't know... maybe it would work to laugh. He's been awfully uptight about things lately. And laughing conveys the instant recognition that it's absurd. Why be surly about it? McCain's supposed to be the cranky guy...

Picture a drawing showing a very old man in a wheelchair, his hospital gown adorned with medals... babe of a wife pushing him, as his first wife wipes drool off of McCain's mouth... while Cindy McCain stops to open packages from Chanel. No, I didn't think so either.

Wait. Who's the "babe of a wife" if not Cindy? I don't get the specifics, but I see the point. I think it would be out of bounds because it would be so unappealing. The New Yorker doesn't put drooling disabled persons on the cover. And the Michelle and Barack image has a transgressive, radical chic edge to it, that I suspect excites the magazine's audience.

IN THE COMMENTS: Christopher Althouse Cohen said (about Obama):

He's always been dead serious about everything. Has he ever said anything funny?

Now, this will constitute the "turning the page" that people seem to want so badly, since George Bush likes to joke around. The George Bush page was pushing the envelope. (Is that a mixed metaphor?) I still can't get my mind around the picture of him saying "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter" and then "punch[ing] the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock."

Victoria writes:

[Obama] doesn't poke fun at himself, doesn't use a light touch in his speeches, doesn't seem relaxed at the podium EVER.

It's gotten so that I wonder how he will acquit himself at the annual Smith Dinner....

I can't imagine, simply cannot for a second imagine Obama making fun of his background, his race, or mention his pastor and his rants during the Al Smith dinner.

What a dour, touchy time we will have, if he's elected.

Blake said:

Nah. He'll be the Margaret Dumont to our Marx Brothers.

He'll have a terrible time, tho'.

Good point! He'll be great fun for the comedians. He's a perfect straight man.

Paco Wové said:

When I saw it, I rolled my eyes and thought, Oh, God, it's the New Yorker trying to be all transgressive again....

Q: [O]nyour controversial 1993 Valentine's Day New Yorker cover in which, during the conflict between Hasidim and African Americans in Brooklyn, you portray a Hasidic man and a black woman embracing. Values and worlds colliding, meeting.

AS: It didn't come as a shock to me that this got people to sit up and take notice. I'm interested in visual signs...

Q: How does that apply to the New Yorker cover?

AS: The signs are highly recognizable. The sign for Hasid is clear and unavoidable, without the usual anti-Semitic physiognomy that goes with it. The sign for African-American woman is equally unavoidable, without entering into Aunt Jemima stereotypes or anything of the kind. Then there's this other sign that has to do with the Valentine's Card-the kiss, the field of red with the lacy decoration around it, all of it weaving together separate meanings. The irony is you have these two groups that are at each other's throats at each other's lips instead. That's supposed to conjure up carnality and yet Valentine's Day, the image of Valentine's Day, isn't about carnality but a kind of benign romantic love. All those things course through this image and the impossibility of it is what's so entertaining for me. What got people most upset that week was not other magazines with the usual S&M imagery-chains and whips, leather and hurt-but something quite benign on the surface, playing with signs. Reverend Dougherty, a representative of the black community in Crown Heights, was very upset I used a black woman: one more time, he said, a white man was oppressing a black woman. Why didn't I have a black man and a Hasidic woman, he asked on the radio. Maybe he's a good reverend, I don't know, but he's a rotten art director. A Hasidic man is a lot easier to recognize than a woman with a handkerchief on her head. In terms of visual signs you've got one thing that works and one thing that doesn't. Even more important, I answered him, if I had used a black man and Hasidic woman, you'd be complaining I was once again showing the black man as a rapist and defiler of white woman. This shows me the problem has nothing to do with the signs being shown but the reverberation of those signs in people's heads. The same thing happened in op-ed articles. There was an op-ed in the New York Times in which a woman who was very upset about the New Yorker cover writes about the Jew's lascivious lips. Another person, equally upset in the Washington Post, described the Jew's prim lips. Now you know I can't draw lips that are simultaneously lascivious and prim; I'm limited.

Q: Sure you can.

AS: I did. I just drew lips.

Speaking of reading the signs, and back to the comments, George says:

He's wearing a dress.

She's in pants.

And if you hold the cover up to a mirror, it reads 'Rekroy Wen' which means "Kill Whitey" in Tshivenda, the language of Barack's homeland.

The cover date "July 21" is the anniversary of the founding the KIPRP, the Kenyan Islamic People's Revolutionary Party.

Yeah, but being upset about it doesn't undo that thinking. The question isn't whether he should be glad that cover was published, but what is his best reaction to it. I'm saying laughing might be better than surliness.

Hm...maybe I'm the stiff here, but my first reaction was confusion. I get the Obama as Muslim, flag burning, go Osama picture, but Michelle as a revolutionary with a gun? I've just never seen her as big on the 2nd Amendment...

It's a chintzy cover because it's just a one-dimensional, smug joke that fails to take into account legitimate concerns about BHO's commitment to the U.S. There's some evidence of a "certain" extremism in Michelle's comments, there are still questions about BHO's background, and his various statements and actions show him to be more of a free agent than someone who supports our fundamental principles. Of course, if he gets this operational then maybe I'll see some of you at the reeducation center.

"Remember that the guy's rhetoric simply doesn't work on about half the population."

I think that a lot of folks are voting for a change in policy, rather than CHANGE. As we get closer to November The impact of eight years of Bush (now McCain) policies won't look good when compared with the impact of the Clinton (now BHO) policies. McCain may have trouble convincing folks that his adopted Bush policies are good for America. The problem isn't Mark* or Phil, the problem is the policies.

*I had CNN on (in the background) when this happened live. I walked out midway through his babbling. To me this was no big deal, I'm well aware of McCain's pivot (from 2000) toward Bush.

This exchange did show why Wolf has been my choice for MTP. He is tough on both sides of the isle, and his questions can be enlightening and relevant. I wonder if he was trying to do some MTP auditioning as he was (probably) closing the door on an auditioning VP.

Ferris: If anybody needs a day off, it's Cameron. He has alot of things to sort out before he graduates. He can't be wound this tight and go to college. His roommate'll kill him. I've come close myself. But I like him. He's a little easier to take when you know why he's like he is. The boy cannot relax. Pardon the French but Cameron is so tight that if you stuck a lump of coal up his ass, in two weeks you'd have a diamond.

"The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama's right-wing critics have tried to create. But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree. (With what the Noble Masses will properly, and correctly be instructed to think if they fail to think that way pre-Obama, before he changes their hearts and makes their lives different.)

Pretty darn elitist snark on a magazine that is pretty elitist themselves.How haughty and arrogant - the New Yorker, with (170? years) of making a specialty and a hallmark of satirical cartoons, may think it is such a caricature - but Obamessiah and Team Axelrod know better.

They know that like good Obamatons, most readers will find it tasteless and offensive....for it blasphemes the Great Man, the coming moral redeemer of America, himself

And the magazine apparantly erred in poking ridicule at Michelle, when Barack himself commanded media lay off his wife - who is listed as a key senior strategist and campaign advisor.

But there is no way Obama should laugh (at least publicly), and he is right to condemn it.

Why?

That's a picture of f**king Osama bin Laden on the wall. Last time I checked, he was wanted for murdering thousands of Americans. Apparently I didn't get the memo that it was ok for 9/11 to be funny amongst politicians, especially ones who want to be president.

Sure, we can laugh. But can you imagine if Bush was caught laughing at a caricature of some sort with him and bin Laden in July of 2004? Hello, president Kerry.

Obama is right to recognize that some parodies should be left for others to enjoy, and he can just move right along.

I love how those on the right (including many of you here) have exploited 9/11 for political gain and wars with all that contrived bull...9/11 changed everything, but now, in this instance with the New Yorker, everybody is able to lighten up (Osama bin Laden is funny!), and use this as yet another senseless, inane attack on Obama, because he's too "uptight" or playing the "victim."

Good satire should be so over the top that it's understood to be satire, right?

So far, the only angry revolution talk has come from Mrs. Obama and Rev. Wright, and Barry O acts like Mr. World rather than Mr. America, so I guess I'm saying without the story this cover is confusing because it's so close to how they represent themselves.

It's the sort of thing that will be interpreted by New Yorker readers as a parody of right-wing paranoia about the Obamas, and will be interpreted by literal-minded right-wing paranoids as the truth. I can imagine it circulating online with a "See? I told you so" caption.

I think Ann's second thought is right: the best way Obama could have reacted -- first -- is to laugh heartily. He might only then have expressed concern that some people would take it literally. (But those people are lost to him anyway.)

Suggestion for a future New Yorker cover: In the foreground we see Cheney & McCain slapping high fives over a newspaper headline announcing the latest casualty figures in Iraq. In the background Cindy and Bush share a line of cocaine under a potrait of John D Rockefeller smiling benignly down upon them. Pretty witty, huh?

If this is what passes for humor over there on the elitist left that the New Yorker serves then I guess my suspicion that lefties have no sense of humor. The cover isn't offensive, it isn't funny and it isn't very well drawn. It's an attempt to garner attention.

Perhaps the New Yorker can make amends to Black Messiah worshippers with a new cover during convention week.

We all know that unlike other Presidents and nominees and Party bigwigs, Obamessiah is too big, too important to the masses to constrain him to a mere giant Convention Center - when a Stadium beckons the true "rock star" to be merciful and allow many more people that have such a deep craving in their souls to personally, physically see him, breath the very air he breathes.

I watched some of the true "rock star" videos of arenas filled to see all the big rock stars that I was too young to see as a MTV kid. Stones. Eagles. My guilty favorite was the ELO show, for the sheer excess and ego, as well as the great music of Jeff Lynne.

A pre-show climaxed by this half a million dollar spaceship prop slowly landing and the band spilling out surrounded in smoke, lasers, pyrotechnics.

Perhaps Obama can harness his limitless self-esteem into a great show at Mile High.(the old name Denverites still use).

First hour the tribute to Saint Martin and the 45th anniversary of his plagarized "I have a Dream" Speech. Followed by a pantheon of Hollywood celebrities intro'd and each given a few seconds to soundbite why Obama has changed their lives. Then a special poem written just for the Great Man is read by Maya Angelou. Then a spaceship can come down that looks like a flying saucer version if the Great Seal of Obama. The ramp goes down, and a litter carrying Obama is born by Jesse Jackson, The Clintons, Al Sharpton, and the King Children (separated based on current King Family lawsuits against one another by the "reverends".)

They circle the stage as Barack blows kisses to the Denver masses and to the hundreds of millions watching - perhaps even on pay-per-view - ready for the sick to begin being cured, world peace to finally come, the ocean's rise stopped, and the beginning of the healing of the Planet through Obama, started.

Who better to introduce him that that famous Colorado Native American and fellow Planet-Healer, Ward Churchill?

After touching some members of the audience with a grave illness or impairmment, another puff of smoke, lasers and a slightly impaired Teddy Kennedy (tumor or scotch?) will greet Obama.

He will then read from the teleprompter what Team Axelrod has prepared for their vessel to dispense, dripping his black preacher mannerismed honey. To adulation, particularly at the Convention Hall, where Democrats , except a large number of stoney-faced bulldykes, weep and huge one another that they cannot be with HIM.

Where the night ends as the electricity in the Hall ignites as realization BOTH Obamas and their children will be born on his litter into the Convention Hall - litter carriers beefed up by Hollywood celebrities paying 20K for the honor. Nothin' but "Obama! Obama! Obama in the Highest!" praise 'Till the lights go out.

It's the sort of thing that will be interpreted by New Yorker readers as a parody of right-wing paranoia about the Obamas, and will be interpreted by literal-minded right-wing paranoids as the truth. I can imagine it circulating online with a "See? I told you so" caption.

You know, I very much doubt that.

Most right-wingers will just be tickled pink that the 'attacks' (presumed or real) have come from Obama's camp, or from a fellow Democrat like Hillary Clinton.

McCain hasn't laid a finger on the guy, nor have the Republicans.

In what has to be the oddest political version of rope-a-dope I've EVER seen, it's all his buddies doing the punching.

It's like watching a continuous loop of Howard Dean's imploding YEAGHHHHHHH! over and over again.

Thanks bearbee for posting some other covers from the New Yorker to give us some perspective. There have been many offensive and crude representations of Bush in the past 8 years which seem to have not bothered very many on the left. However, let the chosen one be lampooned all hell breaks loose.

Satire always contains an element of truth, otherwise it wouldn't be satire.

If Obama gets elected, I predict 4 years of humorlessness, crushing of free speech. No more references to angel food cake, black holes, devils food cake or being in the black financially or anything else (which includes practically everything) that could possibly be construed as racist.

In the New Yorker and its reader's view anyone who doesn't support Obama does so only because they are knuckel dragging right wing parnoids convinced she is a black panter and he a muslim terrorist mole. This cover is just one part of the left's plan to make all criticism of the chosen one racist and beyond the pale of polite discussion. It is really quite brilliant and fascist when you think about it. Since Obama can't speak at the Brandenburg Gate while in Germany, I am sure the old parade grounds at Nuremburg are open. It would be very appropriate.

It was unintentional on the part of the liberals at The New Yorker who wanted to exploit what they think are 'unfounded' fears, but what they succeeded in doing was an actual portrayal; an accurate reflection of Obama's character. He's accumulated FARC, William Ayers, Hamas, Louis Farrakhan, and Kim Jong Il among his friends, admirers, and supporters.

"It was unintentional on the part of the liberals at The New Yorker who wanted to exploit what they think are 'unfounded' fears, but what they succeeded in doing was an actual portrayal; an accurate reflection of Obama's character"

Insults only work if there is a grain of truth to them. For example, a cartoon of McCain dressed in terrorist garb would not work as an insult because it is so obviously untrue. But, when you do one of Obama, with his ties to Ayers and company, his desire to talk to all enemies of the US and so forth, the insult, while a gross exageration, works because there is some truth to it.

I suspect the people at the New Yorker are so out of touch with the rest of the country, they would never dream there is any truth to the cartoon and see the cartoon as a slam on conservatives. The reality is that with the rest of the country it may stick more than they thought.

Ann says...I still can't get my mind around the picture of him saying "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter" and then "punch[ing] the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock."

Because he's not a complete fucking retard? A guy with a 25% approval rating back home still addressing world leaders in street slang, this time wiping his finger below his nose and says "Yo Harper". That's right, you think that's awesome. Nevermind.

Also that Crumb cover with the snotty porno punk as the New Yorker dandy Eustace Tilly...And the gay sailors kissing in Times Square, ala Eisenstadt's famous photo

"Studiously avoiding the tough-hombre style of earlier charismatic figures, he phrases his vision in the tranquilizing accents of Oprah-land. His charisma is grounded in empathy rather than authority, confessional candor rather than muscular strength, metrosexual mildness rather than masculine testosterone. His power of sympathetic insight is said to be uncanny: “Everybody who’s dealt with him,” columnist David Brooks says, “has a story about a time when they felt Obama profoundly listened to them and understood them.”

From a City Journal article about Sen. Obama as a hubris-ridden charismatic leader.

The humorlessness is an interesting insight. It's important to be able to laugh at yourself.

The same people on the right who have been screaming Barack HUSSEIN Obama The MUSLIM will DESTROY America totally get the New Yorker humor and love it! They're peeved that Obama can't take a joke, because, you know, the idea that Obama is anywhere close to that caricature, now that it's convenient to level a different kind of label for him (Grumpy McSourpuss), couldn't be farther from the truth!

Grasping for so many straws and spinning wildly in hypocrisy must be so exhausting.

Actually, I think y'all of the "So you're saying it's not funny but criticizing Obama for not laughing at it" have missed the boat.

What Obama's being criticized for in this thread is not laughing at himself. The idea, as MadisonMan suggests that Obama shouldn't or couldn't laugh about it because that would be fuel for a negative campaign ad sort of underscores that.

I'm reminded of a famous incident some of you may recall:

My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you I just signed legislation which outlaws Russia forever. The bombing begins in five minutes...

Oh, the hysteria.

Because, of course, Reagan was on the verge of starting World War III at any second, in the minds of media/liberals.

What might have Obama said in response to this? "Oh, they'll love this back in the madrassa."

He should embrace those who would paint him as a Muslim terrorist, because most people are not only going to dismiss that out of hand, they're probably going to call into question other criticism that they've heard of him.

Here's an official White House photo of Hillary in her Hijab. I haven't been able to find a foolish McCain photo yet:http://www.clintonlibrary.gov/photo-ClintonWH3.html

Obama is a serious guy, not a jokester. Most humor is at someone's expense, and I don't see Obama as either sadistic or masochistic. I never worked under an executive who ever cracked a joke. Has W. produced any yuks over the past eight years?

I think he and the campaign surveyed their options in advance. He could do as he did and be accused of humorlessness. The other option, acting amused, would leave him open to accusation of elitism as defined by (a) 'getting' New Yorker humor, and/or (b) appreciating irony.

It is really nice to see someone out here who " gets it. " And you really don't have to be a law professor to " get it " but the yuppies around here in the Obama for President office are too busy furiously fondling their i-phones to come up for air.

Even after his outrageous vote for FISA I am still gonna vote for him.

Any New Yorker subscriber would have turned to the tag line " The Politics of Fear " and understood. But these kids would have told Jonathan Swift that his recipe for cooking and eating children was insulting because it didn't use ethnic sauces.

I've worked under several. A certain amount of cynicism and self-deprecation can really help a working relationship.

Has W. produced any yuks over the past eight years?

"Farewell from the world's #1 polluter" made me laugh.

My favorite Bush humorous moment, though, came from a meeting between Bush and some Iraqi charity workers, in which one of the latter felt compelled to confess to having been a member of the Muslim Brotherhood in college. Bush replied "that's ok, my college days weren't my best either".